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Tracy K. Smith

Emily Dickinson Birthday Tribute

Overview

Co-sponsored with the Poetry Society of America

“The surfaces of a Tracy K. Smith poem are beautiful and serene, but underneath, there is always a sense of an unknown vastness. Her poems take the risk of inviting us to imagine, as the poet does, what it is to travel in another person’s shoes.” —Toi Derricotte

Tracy K. Smith has created verse that probes the universe, both interplanetary and inside ourselves. Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Nonfiction and selected as a Notable Book by the New York Times and Washington Post. Her most recent collection of poems, Life on Mars, won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was also a New York Times Notable Book. She is currently the director of Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program.

Dr. David DeVorkin, Senior Curator of Astronomy for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, joins Smith to talk about astronomy from a 19-th century perspective.

At the reception following the reading, Emily Dickinson’s black cake is provided by The Suga Chef.